You will be able to find Wetcoast Winter in Tough Love Sock, Superwash Sport, Superwash Worsted and CashSilk Lace at both Urban Yarns and Three Bags Full in Vancouver and also at Pick Up Sticks in Ontario. We even have it as dye-to-order until February 28, 2010 online here »

See what some people have knit up already with the Wetcoast Winter colourway: Julia at Crispy Noodle and her Luscious Lace, Alexa the Gourmet Crafter’s 5-Hour Baby Sweater (which, I think, you can see in person at Urban Yarns).

And how about an Olympic knitters meetup? Some of the knitters on Ravelry have been discussing how we might be able to get together with guests and visitors to Vancouver over the next 16 days. Want to join in the conversation? Visit Ravelry for the full discussion. I’m thinking we might be able to organize a brunch at The Whip Gallery & Restaurant on East 6th Avenue and Main Street in Vancouver on Saturday, February 20th and then walk over to the studio afterwards so that you guys can have a look at how the space has changed since we first opened. Again, nothing is confirmed yet, but I’d love to hear if you guys would be interested in getting together!

The yarn is 50% of the softest and squishiest superwash merino wool blended with 50% glossy silk in a fingering/sock weight. It’s about 375 yards per 4 oz skein and could definitely be used to knit a pair of special socks, or better yet, a little shawl or cardigan. I love this yarn because it has the easy-care of superwash, but also added strength and lustre from the silk.

I’d like to add this to our website for early Spring, so go ahead and email me your suggestions at felicia [at] sweetgeorgiayarns [dot] com up until February 28, 2010. Send up to 5 suggestions for the name of the base yarn (not the actual purple colour) and also the colourway you’d like if you win… see our colourways here » So far, our sock yarns are called things like “Tough Love Sock” and “Superwash Sock”…

I’m so looking forward to hearing your ideas!!

Since the holidays, I’ve been buried in a pile of dyed yarn, but it’s all getting finished up and send out to yarn shops now. In the next couple weeks, you should start to see our yarns available at a few new venues:

• Once Around in Mill Valley, CA | Once Around is having their grand opening on February 1st so if you are around the San Francisco Bay Area, maybe stop in and see! They are all crafts — sewing, découpage, wreath-making, knitting, stamping, embroidery, glitter and lots more.
• The Tinsmith’s Wife in Comfort, TX | Located in a little antique town, everything about this shop is so warm and friendly.
• Simply Socks Yarn Company online | Catering to the needs, desires and whims of sock knitters everywhere.
• Mad About Ewe in Nanaimo, British Columbia | Our first yarn shop on Vancouver Island! It’s located in the Old City Quarter of Nanaimo.
• Eat.Sleep.Knit online and in Georgia | Soon, we’ll have a comprehensive selection of yarns available on the Eat.Sleep.Knit shop site. They specialize in handpainted yarns!
• The Ashton Store in Ashton, Ontario | This is one of the oldest village general stores around dating back to 1851! Now this old general store stocks knitting yarn and hosts knitters every week.

And lastly, we are going to take a booth at the upcoming Fibres West festival in Abbotsford this March 26 and 27, so come see us and our fibre/yarn in person!

Occasionally this past year, I’ve had a couple fibre club members subscribe but not realize that it was actually spinning fibre. And since they didn’t actually know how to spin, I was perfectly happy to dye up some sock yarn skeins as substitutes for the fibre.

I’m enjoying the creative freedom in being able to dye new colourways and play with some luxurious new blends. I’m even tempted to offer a “Yarn Club” type subscription if enough people are interested.

Want to join us for our second year of Fibre Club? We’re taking new subscriptions now on the online shop and you can always follow along with our Ravelry group. The Fibre Club members have all been so positive and active about spinning up their fibre and posting photos. Reminds me that I need to finish spinning the Wensleydale in my own set of November fibres.

This pattern, the Vine Yoke Cardigan, is wonderfully written. It’s sort of a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet and so far, the lace pattern seems to be working out just as Ysolda says it will. I’m enjoying the knitting of it as it’s going pretty quickly. Although I won’t finish in the 10 days someone else on Ravelry took to knit this, hopefully it won’t be in my queue for a year… unlike other projects.

So, for Winter, I’m adding this new Slate grey colour to our palette of Dye To Order yarns as well as the Cypress green above. It’s a bit woodsy and murky, a darker and more desaturated teal green. Both these colours will be available in all our yarns, although it might take a bit of time to get it all entered into the online shop. If you don’t see it, just email/txt/twitter.

Another change we’ll be making to the offerings is that our Superwash Worsted and Superwash Sport yarns will be available as larger 4 oz skeins now… more than double the 50g skeins we were doing originally. Hopefully for you sweater knitters, this just means fewer joins and more continuous knitting time. I think we all need more of that. And the opposite is true for the Silk Lamb Lace — we’ve changed the put up to 60g of 625 yards of laceweight goodness. More affordable at this skein size and perfect for the smaller shawl designs that have been popping up!

One of the first challenges I had was trying to define or describe this space to people. Located on the fourth floor of a live/work building, it’s not a typical retail environment. It is an industrial-looking workspace, complete with concrete floors and walls, where we make hand-dyed yarns and spinning fibre. But I know that people came to the studio expecting to see every single yarn in every single colour and often I received (and still receive) phone calls asking if I carry Rowan yarns. No, it’s not that kind of yarn store. Maybe one day, but not today.

And so it was very important this past year for us to begin working with real, beautiful yarn stores again. I so much want for people to be able to touch and feel the yarns in person and to be able to experience that in their local yarn store. Nowadays, when you come to our studio, you will very often see (and smell!) yarn drying, yarn in the middle of being packaged or yarn being dyed. There actually is just a little bit of yarn on hand for retail sale. Most of what is in the studio now is being made to go out to shops. I love that the yarn shops can focus on beautiful displays, great customer service and keeping their shelves nicely stocked. And I love that by working in this way, I can focus on making beautiful yarn for those shops.

Absolutely, you can come visit our studio and see work in progress. And absolutely you can come see colours in person and make a custom order. And definitely, you can request dyed-to-order yarns and fibres from our studio online. But I encourage you to visit the fine local yarn stores that are now carrying SweetGeorgia Yarns… including L’Oisive Thé in Paris, France… our first time in France.

So this is kind of why we didn’t host a big party at the studio on this very rainy Vancouver Sunday. Well, because the studio floor is being taken up by yarn racks and bins of undyed yarn.

Instead, we are celebrating our Year One anniversary with a brand new website, a Free Shipping over $100 sale (for US & Canada), and a new pattern in Twist Collective featuring our Superwash Sport yarn. I’m sure that in the upcoming year we’ll have a few more falling-on-face-type experiences, but we are committed to focusing on developing more beautiful yarns and fibres, distributing our yarns and fibres through our website and fine retailers, and also designing more knitting patterns to inspire you. Happy anniversary.

I owe this blog a whole lot of posts. But let’s start off with a simple and slouchy hat that I designed while I was sitting in my car for over 90 minutes, waiting to cross the border into the US to attend the Earthues Natural Dye Studio workshops in Ballard, Seattle, WA. A lovely clover lace pattern is the basis for this slouchy beret-style hat. Its easy-to-memorize lace pattern makes for a very simple and elegant one-skein gift. Since that day in July, I’ve made four of these hats in different yarns and colours and tested different sizes and gauges. I like this result the best:

Knit it up in a luxurious and drapey Merino Silk Aran or a lush and cushy Superwash Worsted yarn. I love how the lace is gentle and uncomplicated. It decreases seamlessly at the crown to form a beret-type shape. The simple pattern lets you add repeats if you like to make a slouchier hat.

The 2-page PDF pattern includes both charted and written directions. And it’s available via Ravelry or the shop site. And it’s free. My gift to you this crisp fall morning. Keep your head warm.

SweetGeorgia has been a busy place this summer. Since returning from the week-long dye workshop in Seattle, I’ve been dyeing for wholesale orders and shipping to yarn stores. Make One Yarn Studio in Calgary was the first to receive their shipment of a wide selection of our yarns. And this past week, we finished orders for Unwind Yarn House in Ontario and Black Sheep Yarns in Port Moody, BC. I’ve been re-establishing old relationships I had with our retailers and on the look out for new retailers as well. Personally, I am so very excited to start seeing our yarns in stores again and am excited about the opportunity to make and design new colours and yarns.

This fall, we’re introducing our lofty and luxurious Merino Silk Aran, a 50/50 blend of soft merino and cultivated silk, along with several new jewel-toned colours. Espresso is a deep, rich chocolate brown. Cayenne is our spicy burnt orange and persimmon colour. Ultraviolet is a super deep purple violet. And Nightshade is an sparkling dark indigo navy. All these colours are available in all our dye to order yarns, available now.

Merino Silk Aran is like the big sister to our Merino Silk Lace that we started dyeing this past summer. My mom has been diligently knitting up a batch of scarves for our family members in Taiwan and devised this quick knit that we’re calling “Ginger Rib Scarf“. It’s knit up on big needles with the 8-ply Merino Silk Aran and is super easy to make. One skein makes a cute, short-ish scarf or add another skein for extra length.

And last night at our spinning class, one of our weaving students, Jean, stopped by and brought along her beautiful handspun from August’s Fibre Club offering. It’s a blend of merino/bamboo/tussah silk and dyed up in warm tones of burnt orange, gold, chocolate brown and warm red. I’m excited to see what else you all spin with the fibre.

One last thing — the studio will be closed from September 11 to 23 as I’m going to be traveling to California again. All orders will ship when I return at the end of September!

I talked about changing my dye practice from very sharply variegated colourways, requiring a shameful amount of plastic waste, and moving towards a more water- and energy-efficient workflow. That is the reason I have moved more towards kettle-dyeing, semi-solid shade colourways and multiple colour overdyes… so that I could better take advantage of the low-impact benefits of acid dyeing.

Also, I related to the guild members how natural dyeing is not a benefit to the environment for larger scale operations and noted how Lorna’s Laces Green Line ended up being dyed with conventional synthetic dyes.

Regardless of natural vs. synthetic dye sources, I’ve also tried to implement the colour principles that I learned from Michele Whipplinger including the idea of chromatic neutrals. That is, I’m trying to dye more complex browns and greys as opposed to colours that are so obviously… colourful. Colours that are slightly desaturated and more rich in depth.

I’m also working with a new 50/50 silk and merino laceweight base yarn. It’s a slightly heavier laceweight, but so glossy and gorgeous. It’s 765 yards in a 100 g skein and I’m looking forward to knitting up something like a Swallowtail Shawl in it. It has been, so far, taking the colour so well and I’ll be adding it to the online shop soon too.

There are so many things to learn and so many things to explore. I’m happy that I’ll be spending the summer dyeing more of these deeper, richer colours in preparation for the autumn.

the fibre // merino
Merino. For me, this fibre was so tempting, so enticing, I had to learn to spin it very early on. Usually, new spinners are steered away from merino and to stronger, longer stapled fibres, but spinning a skein of sproingy, super squishy merino will have you hooked. Spin this fibre with a worsted drafting method and you’ll get a beautiful and classic yarn.

the colourway // renewal
Spring is a time to renew and be made new. These colours make me think of potential, flexibility and growth. There are longer stretches of rose and lavender and shorter intervals of gold and rust and tulip leaf green. Spinning this all together and 2-plying back on itself might be a recipe for skeins of muddy looking yarn. Maybe take this opportunity to try spinning a fine, firm singles and then Navajo plying into a 3-ply in order to maintain the clarity of the colours.

I truly like to believe that we can renew ourselves. That we can be made fresh and new. That no one is keeping score of your past mistakes. That you can always try and do better. For myself personally, I’ve dedicated the month of May to trying to improve how I think about things. To really try to believe that no one is watching or waiting for me to fail. That I am doing my best and that hopefully a smigen of good will come of it.

To follow up with the previous post about meaningful work, part of me felt very ungrateful for having written it. I think that despite the great expense involved with creating and setting up this studio and business and how stressed I might get about making this all happen, I am very blessed to be in this position. I realize that in our current economic situation people around me are losing their jobs and that the cost of living and healthcare for everyone is very high. It does seem to be quite a luxury to be able to even make an attempt at your dreams.